


Reoite

by peninhand



Series: coiriúil [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-07 06:04:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20304679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peninhand/pseuds/peninhand
Summary: "The darkness is safe. In the darkness I shall remain."Máire was a prisoner aboard the Fiontar, the airship that held the last of humankind after an extinction-level event plunged the world into a never-ending winter, too cold for even the hardiest of humans to survive. As Máire fights against society's class structure and corrupt excuse for a government intensifies, she finds new reasons to fight; she fights to remember.Remember her family.Remember her home.Remember why she was locked up in the first place.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Frozen Criminal](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13694694) by [peninhand](https://archiveofourown.org/users/peninhand/pseuds/peninhand). 

> This is a rough first draft so continuity errors and spelling mistakes will be present.

The darkness, that never ending darkness. Time was inconsequential, day and night blurring together, until all that remained, was the darkness.

But yet, there was comfort to be found within. Despite the lack of memories, a gut feeling remained. The darkness was safe, safer than any other place they could be. It wasn't being in the dark that terrified them, but what could possibly be outside the darkness that left them feeling terrified.

The darkness is safe. In the darkness I shall remain.

Was the darkness silent? No, not silent. There was a hum, a low rumble, the odd click, but the clicks never repeated themselves, there was no pattern to it; not one they could distinguish in any case. At first, the rumble was deafening, insanity threatening to poison their mind. As time passed, the rumbling faded into the background, the clicking became a lullaby, and the threat of insanity passed.

Was that a twitch?

No, they had not moved since the darkness began, there was no way that a finger, a toe, an eye, could twitch. The cold metal beneath them, though numbing, was the only indication of a physical presence within the darkness. The needle - they remembered the needle, but after so much time in the darkness, they began to question whether it was a memory, or merely a dream. It was so faint, so fleeting.

Were they paralysed? A coma? Trapped within their own mind, they wondered if they were even alive.

Then, with a rush, the darkness receded, and in its place, their senses were flooded.

Noise.

Smell.

Light.

So overwhelmed, their hands instinctively flew to their face, covering their eyes.

Bring back the darkness.

It was cold, colder than the darkness had ever been. Loud, louder than the rumbling had ever been, but the moment their hands flew to their face, the noises stopped, and they froze.

I can move.

So distracted by their own amazement at being able to move, they had yet to acknowledge the room full of people surrounding them. The sound of heavy breathing, and the strong stench of unwashed bodies was ignored as instead, the person on the metal tray sat up, unsure of what to make of the lack of darkness. Everything their gut was saying, told them to retreat back to the darkness, yet somehow, they knew, that was never going to happen.

Finally, after a moment, they turned, facing the crowd that had gathered around the metal tray, and the person who sat upon it. None too subtly, some in the crowd began throwing curious glances between the person on the tray - who was now revealed to be a young woman, thick dark red hair, almost black in the low artificial light, unbrushed and cascading down her back, a stark contrast to her pale, porcelain skin - and the man who stood beside the tray, while others, further back in the crowd, merely wished to see who the mysterious person was, that had everyone around them so enraptured.

Long lashes fluttered, framing confused, murky brown eyes, dark brows furrowing as she tried to make sense of her surroundings. Lips tinted blue from the cold quivered and a meek attempt to warm them. Slowly she curled in on herself, cowering both in an effort to shield herself from the biting cold and self-consciousness. A quick glimpse revealed she was wearing nothing more than a thin black shirt and a loose pair of black pants, both seemingly made of a light cotton, doing nothing to protect her from the freezing conditions.

Glancing up, the woman's gaze wandered, before landing on the face of the man that stood beside her. His sharp blue eyes were hard, along with the rest of his face, but there was something behind that hardness that looked like hope. His blond hair was short and covered with a black beanie, the wisp of a curl escaping at the nape of his neck. His face, should it be clean, would be a fair colour and was covered in filth and grime, much like every other person surrounding them. He had a rugged, unkept beard, as if he had been unable to shave for weeks, or ever. Hidden beneath the beard was the outline of a strong jaw. Like everyone else surrounding them, he looked underfed. His clothing seemed to hang off him, torn and shredded in places. If it wasn't for his strong hands tightly gripping some sort of axe, he would not have been considered a threat.

For the first time since the woman had awoken, the man spoke directly to her; his pink lips seeming almost hesitant yet hopeful as he pronounced one word.

One word holding so many emotions and questions.

"Máire?"


	2. i || torann

**Torann**

_Irish_, meaning noise, _noun _– sound, especially of a loud, harsh, or confused kind.

* * *

His voice, it was familiar to her. Through her foggy mind, a spark of recognition flared, before once again fading away. His voice, it was familiar; it was comforting. Truthfully, she had not registered that the man had spoken to her, she was so focused on his voice. He sounded hopeful, yet desperate, almost unwilling to hope. His voice was deep, rough, yet not harsh. It held an air of superiority, yet he sounded vulnerable.

Who is he?

In that moment, she realised she was staring, yet she did not care. Something in her gut told her to look away, but the look in his eyes kept drawing her in. Beneath the harsh, frozen gaze, was a glimmer of hope. His brow was furrowed, his mouth drawn taut, everything in his expression spoke of a fierce leader, hardened by unspeakable events of times past, yet his eyes - his eyes - they held something deeper, something softer, something sweeter.

“Máire? What are you doing here?”

The question triggered something deep inside her, but she didn’t know what. That same spark was ignited, but once again fizzled away into nothing. It was if a door had been unlocked inside her mind, but she still had to find that door and open it herself.

Blinking up at the man before her, Máire finally registered that the imposing man before her, was in fact, speaking to her - and quite clearly expecting an answer.

Mouth gaping, the confused frown upon her face turned concerned when the only sound she could make was a dry croak.

Gaze never leaving her own, the imposing man sent the boy standing next to him off to try and find some water for her. The boy was still young, still just a child, yet aged beyond his years for reasons beyond her knowledge. He was tall, aboriginal, and his once deep russet skin had become pasty and translucent from a lack of sunlight, his blue eyes sparkled with a youthful curiosity, hiding the aged wariness that seemed to fill the people surrounding them.

But that seemed to be the only thing that filled them.

Every single person that Máire could see would have fit perfectly next to the word ‘malnourished’ in the dictionary. Clothes were hanging off them in odd place, bumps and bruises, cuts and contusions littered their skin. They were pale, as if they had never seen the sun in their life. With the darkness that surrounded them and lurked in the corners, maybe they hadn’t.

Slipping through the crowd, the boy returned with a small canteen, to which he passed to the man who stood before the confused redhead. Tentatively, the dented canteen was offered forward with a single command, “drink.”

As timid fingers brushed against his own, the man’s breath hitched. The warm touch of the woman before him was near unnatural, yet it was the last thing on his mind.

She was real.

Like a cornered animal, the woman grasped the canteen close to her chest, removing the lid. Sniffing the contents and hesitantly sipping the liquid, she found nothing but water; slightly unclean, but still drinkable.

After sculling the water, the woman lowered the canteen from her lips and met the gaze of the man that commanded such a presence from the people around him unflinchingly. The next words he said felt like a drop of sweat rolling down her spine - welcoming on a hot summers day and yet still make her shiver. This, however, was not a hot summer’s day, and therefore the feeling was very unwelcome.

“Máire, do you remember me?”

The name was familiar, but at the same time… not.

The furrowed brows and a lack of comprehension in her gaze seemed to say it all to large man before her as he slowly, subtly pulled away from her. To the average person, the man hadn’t moved at all, but as Máire’s gaze never left his, she saw how his shoulders shifted with added tension, how his chin lifted slightly in defiance, how his once welcoming ocean gaze froze over like the world that surrounded them.

“I’m sorry.”

The two simple words held so much meaning behind it. Her lilting accent was another piece to the puzzle of her memory that she was trying to solve. But it’s hard to solve a puzzle if you don’t know the bigger picture, if you’re missing most of the pieces and the ones you do have don’t match.

As the man stared at the keypad beside the rusting metal doors, Máire finally had a moment where she was able to study the man before her without feeling like a bug under the microscope. That is to say, despite the fact that people still stared, the weight of their gaze had lifted from a demanding curiosity to slightly suspicious. Máire wanted nothing more than to shake off their gazes, the feeling of thousands of bugs crawling under her skin left her feeling unsettled.

Trying to distract herself she locked her gaze with the keypad the blond man was staring daggers at, before slamming his palm down in frustration. The moment almost seemed familiar, yet another niggling sensation in her mind, and she allowed the slightest of smiles to slip onto her face before her gaze absentmindedly slipped to the cause of the frustrations.

Who knows how such a large group managed to get this far without encountering a locked pad, for it was clear that this was their first. For whatever reason, they seemed insistent on discovering the code to the old lock pad, never mind the fact it would have been infinitely easier to just remove the face and strip the wires behind it. It would have just been like hotwiring a car instead of trying to find the owner and pickpocket the key-

How did I know what hotwiring a car is like?

The sudden thought scared the woman wrapped in scraps of fabric, warmed by the bodies huddled, waiting to see what was on the other side of the door.

Growing fondly irritated the redheaded woman stepped forward, not so gently nudging people aside and stood in front of the keypad, as if wishing it would open.

* * *

Alex watched as the tendons in her hand rippled like waves lapping against the shoreline as her fingers danced on the metal panel to a melody that only she could hear. He thought that perhaps she had been a pianist in another life, her fingers were long and lithe, the tips barely brushing the metal. The movement seemed completely subconscious as her gaze never left the keypad before them. A pause in her rhythm caused him to tense, followed by a disappointed sigh as she shook her head and resumed her rhythm.

Slowly, Alex let his gaze travel up the length of her arm to what little he could see of her face behind her curtain of deep red hair. His mind flew back to when they were younger – when they were on the ground – they would lay in the fields of his family’s farm and watch as the clouds turn a dusky pink, watch as the sky darkened to the deepest blue, watch as the stars slowly appeared, one by one, and the bees that hovered in her hair went home for the night, just as they should.

But those years are long gone. The ground is uninhabitable and Máire no longer knew who he was, or who she was. She had no memory of empty fields or counting stars, the woman before him was a stranger with the face of the love of his life.

The blond man was startled out of his musing when the woman before him spun around and yanked his dagger from his belt. Without sparing him a glance she expertly shoved the blade between the panel and the wall from beneath and levered said panel until it popped up with a small shower of sparks. Barely flinching, the confident redhead striped back some of the exposed wires before wrapping them around each other. As the last two wires touched, the doors before them slid open effortlessly.

The blond man looked down at the woman still crouching in front of the panel, incredulously raising an eyebrow as if to say, “you’ve done this before?”

A quick one-shouldered shrug was all that he got in reply before she stood up using Luke’s offered hand to help her keep her balance. With the grace and power, he knew she possessed, he didn’t think she needed it yet she did it anyway and the gesture touched him.

Maybe she wasn’t someone completely different.

Maybe he just needed to help her find herself.


End file.
